KIRKUS REVIEW

When the Indian agent comes for
Irene and her brothers, their parents reluctantly give them up to be taken to
one of Canada’s infamous residential schools.

At the school, Irene is separated
from her brothers, scrubbed, shorn, and assigned a number: 759. When she and
another girl exchange words in Ojibwa, a nun punishes Irene for speaking “the
devil’s language.” The punishment is horrifying: she is made to hold a bedpan
filled with hot coals. The year passes slowly, chapel preferable to chores and
lessons, especially as she can see her brothers there. At home the
next summer, Irene tells her father, the community’s chief, about the
“lessons” taught at “that horrible place”—and when the Indian agent comes again
in the fall, the children hide while he tells the agent, “You will NEVER. TAKE
MY CHILDREN. AWAY. AGAIN!” By the time readers get to this place in the story,
they will have gotten past the stiff beginning and occasional overwriting and
will be as relieved as Irene at their rescue. Newland’s watercolors capture the
warmth of this Anishinaabe family and the austerity of the boarding school; the
scene in which Irene’s father stares down the agent will have children
cheering. Dupuis and Kacer base the story on the experiences of Dupuis’
grandmother, and they provide further information on the residential schools in
an author’s note.

A moving glimpse into a
not-very-long-past injustice. (Picture book. 7-11)

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